


Learning to Love

by nerdyminded



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Adam Parrish is Bad at Feelings, I have no regrets, M/M, Pynch Fluff, adam has never had anyone say they love him before, part 3 lowkey inspired by the office when jim proposes to pam, ronan lynch is actually a sappy little shit, the first time they say i love you
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-01
Updated: 2017-07-31
Packaged: 2018-12-09 14:44:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11671188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nerdyminded/pseuds/nerdyminded
Summary: Anyone with eyes--no, anyone with a heart and a mind--no, anything sentient, for not all sentient things lived--could tell, by just one glance, that Adam Parrish loved Ronan Lynch. Likewise, Adam knew, anyone could tell that Ronan Lynch loved Adam Parrish.But Adam Parrish was not used to loving and being loved.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> "We both know I go too far like when I wrecked your car  
> And almost fought your father when he pushed me in the yard  
> And all those nights we snuck out, like to meet up at the bar  
> Don't worry, my love, we're learning to love  
> But it's hard when you're young."
> 
> \--"Young" by The Chainsmokers

A secret is a strange thing.

Adam Parrish knew secrets like he knew his reflection. Better, even, than he knew his reflection, as there had been a time in his life when he'd avoided it at all costs, not wanting to see the bruises, the cuts, concrete proof of the secret he'd harbored his entire life. To Adam, secrets were shields. So long as he constructed a sturdy wall of them, so long as all the bricks matched up, so long as there were no windows or gaps anyone could possibly see through, a secret served a sturdy foundation for survival.

Most of those secrets had become irrelevent months ago. Some he'd replaced with new secrets; some he'd practically broken his back hauling apart from the rest; most he'd just barely nudged and realized just how easily they crumbled, just how satisfied he was to watch them dissolve into the wind like grains of sand. One secret, however, still stood at the center. A secret he knew others knew, knew others had probably known before he had even known it himself. Maybe he hadn't noticed because of all the other secrets; maybe he'd been so distracted trying to keep them intact that he hadn't noticed this, this secret so out of place, so hidden in plain sight. The most important secret he kept was the secret he had probably always known but only recently noticed.

Adam Parrish was madly, irrevocably in love with Ronan Lynch.

Gansey had asked him about it once, a few weeks after Adam had originally asked Gansey if he loved Blue, if he thought he was Blue's true love. After Adam and Ronan had decided to be more open, had decided to make their relationship official, after Gansey had died and come back and the four of them had spent countless afternoons caught in each other, Gansey had finally asked Adam the question Adam had been asking himself every single day: "Do you love him?"

What Adam wanted to say was that of course he loved Ronan. It didn't take a psychic to see it; Adam's love for Ronan was as transparent as Cabeswater's streams. It was there in the way Adam swept his thumb over Ronan's index finger each time they held hands, back and forth. It was there in the way Adam peppered the majority of his sentences with Ronan, Ronan, Ronan, because Ronan was all there was. It was there in the way Adam watched Ronan when they were with Gansey and Blue and Henry, when they were with Declan and Opal and Matthew, when they were alone, when he was falling asleep in his dorm upstate after a long day of classwork and homework and missing Ronan's voice. Anyone with eyes--no, anyone with a heart and a mind--no, anything sentient, for not all sentient things lived--could tell, by just one glance, that Adam Parrish loved Ronan Lynch. Likewise, Adam knew, anyone could tell that Ronan Lynch loved Adam Parrish.

But Adam Parrish was not used to loving and being loved.

"How does it feel to kiss Blue now?" Adam had asked instead, deflecting Gansey's question. "Now that the curse is broken? Now that you know nothing will happen?"

Gansey had just blinked, taken aback. "It feels...liberating. Like the thing that once tore me apart every waking hour of my life is just gone."

Adam had sensed his lie, or partial-lie, or self-reassurance, only because Adam knew Gansey better than most, and because Adam knew partial-lies and self-reassurance better than most. "Except sometimes you still hesitate, right?" Adam had asked. At Gansey's surprised look, he'd continued, "I see you sometimes. I see you hesitate just before your lips brush hers; I see you thinking what if this time I die? Things like that, you can't just erase them. Things like that don't just vanish."

"You're right," Gansey had said. "But what does this have to do with--oh." And then, Adam had felt, for the first time in as long as he could remember, that Gansey actually understood him more than anyone else might have. "You love Ronan, and you know Ronan loves you, but you still can't tell him you love him because you're worried, even sub-consciously, that Ronan might not say he loves you back." Gansey was smarter than he gave himself credit for. Or maybe it was just that he could read Adam like an open book now. Whatever the reason, Adam had just nodded. Gansey was right. Gansey was almost always right, especially about this.

Now, Adam and Ronan lay sprawled on the sofa at the Barns, neither of them fully asleep but neither of them fully awake. Adam had his back pressed against Ronan's chest, their legs tangled together, impossible to separate. Ronan was playing with Adam's fingers, lifting and stroking them one by one. Adam was watching him and thinking, again, about his conversation with Gansey. If only he could silence the illogical-yet-logical analytic side of his mind to say it to Ronan, right there. It wasn't the first time he'd thought it; there had been other times, too, countless times. Countless moments where the words would have been perfect, would have served the perfect disruption of their comfortable silence. I love you, Adam thought. I love you, I love you, I love you. He'd thought it enough times for it to feel more natural. For it to sound more natural, but still, things often sounded better in his head than on his tongue. He knew he'd stumble over the words if he tried. He also knew he'd probably throw up before he could get them out, just because what if Ronan didn't love him? What if this, to Ronan, was something else, something lighter, something more shallow?

He couldn't risk it. Not with this.

"What are you thinking about?" Ronan, voice gruff, asked. This was something Adam equally loved and hated about their relationship: Ronan could always tell when Adam was thinking, whether the thoughts were dinner plans or weekend shifts or the square root of _x_ times _i_ divided by _n_. Adam couldn't lie to Ronan, not about anything, but especially not about this.

"You."

He didn't have to look at Ronan to hear the smirk in his voice. "Oh, really? What about me?"

"I just..." Five syllables. That's all it would take. Ronan, I love you. Adam could feel his pulse thrumming in his veins, could feel it threaten to burst through his skin. "I love--I love the Barns."

The words had rushed out before Adam could stop them, and there they hung, in the air between Adam and Ronan. Adam knew that Ronan knew he was lying, and for a moment, he was worried he would call his bluff, worried he'd ruined this moment by not saying what he wanted to. But all Ronan said was, "You're welcome here anytime. What's ours is ours." Adam couldn't help but feel grateful. Not only for Ronan's choice of words, for he had taken to using the phrase as opposed to what's _mine is yours_ , knowing how much Adam would hate it; but also because Ronan had to have known that wasn't what Adam really wanted to say, yet he still hadn't pressed the issue.

It only made Adam love him more.


	2. Chapter 2

_Do you think this is actually real?_

Ronan Lynch had asked himself this question for months. He'd asked it when he'd caught Adam staring at him from across the room; he'd asked it when he and Adam had ended up in a heap of tangled limbs and toppled grocery carts; he'd asked it on their midnight drives to the Barns. He'd asked it on a daily basis, right until _Adam_ kissed _him_ , not the other way around. Right until he'd realized that yes, this was as real as anything, perhaps realer than most things in his life. There were more teenagers in love than there were teenagers who could pull things out of their dreams, or could communicate with magical forests, or could die and be brought back to life because of said forest's sacrifice. His relationship with Adam was the realest aspect of his life. His relationship with Adam was something he could feel physically and emotionally, at any moment, anytime, anywhere he wanted. His relationship with Adam was something he could talk about from his personal life that wouldn't drive any outsiders to commit him to a mental institution. Sure, there may be a few choice bigots who may not support his lifestyle, who may deserve a few choice words and a certain choice finger, but all-in-all, Ronan Lynch in love with Adam Parrish was more real than anything else.

Even still, Ronan sometimes worried that none of it was real. Not that Adam's feelings for him weren't real, or that his feelings for Adam weren't real--these things he was sure of--but that this was simple exploration, or that none of it was happening at all.

Now, the two of them were at the Barns (they were always at the Barns, it seemed, when Adam was home from college, whether for the weekend or a few days or--his favorite--entire breaks).

Ronan was on the couch, beer in hand, waiting for Adam to choose a movie. From the floor, he read various titles aloud. Ronan just watched him, listened to the cadence of his voice, savoring each word, savoring the view. He would miss this when Adam returned to college. Every second in Adam's company was a second well-spent, a second Ronan stored in the back of his mind in the hopes that maybe he could return to it in a dream, that maybe he could make it last longer.

"Ronan?" Adam said. "I just listed about fifty movies."

In truth, Ronan hadn't been paying much attention, too caught up in Adam to care. Instead of telling him this, however, he just said, "I've seen all of them about fifty times." After a moment, he added, "Besides, it's not like we're actually going to watch anything. We always watch shit for ten minutes and then we spend the rest of the time focused on each other."

This time, Adam veered his head around to face him. Ronan knew he shouldn't have taken so much satisfaction in making Adam blush, but that didn't change the fact that he loved it. "You're the one who suggested it."

"Doesn't mean I'm opposed to just lying around here with you like usual."

At first, Adam didn't move. Then, the corners of his lips quirked up and he said, "Okay." Just two syllables, just one glance, and Ronan knew like he'd never known before: he was in love with Adam Parrish the way he had never been in love with anything, had never cared about anything else before. One glance and one word should not have made him feel as if Chainsaw had perched in his ribcage and taken flight, and from anyone else, they wouldn't. But this was Adam. Adam, who had probably never in his life heard the words _I love you_. Adam, who probably needed to hear them, deserved to hear them, more than anyone else in Henrietta or the rest of the world.

"I love you, Parrish," Ronan said, because he did, without a doubt. Because there was nothing else for him but this, loving Adam Parrish, and it was time to let him know outright, no matter what. He didn't expect Adam to say it back, didn't expect Adam to curl up right beside him and kiss him or any of that Gansey-and-Blue stuff they were all used to, but he needed him to know anyway. For both of them, Ronan thought, Adam needed to know.

All color drained from Adam's face. He rose from his place on the carpet, wrung his hands, and took one hesitant half-step towards Ronan, like a stray animal testing the boundaries around a human. Sometimes in dreams Ronan stumbled across them, and usually he tried to bring them back, if they would only step close enough for him to touch. He wasn't expecting Adam to say he loved him back, wasn't expecting Adam to even acknowledge it. He just wanted Adam close enough to keep, close enough to bring back before he darted away and dissipated into the dust of dreams.

"Thank you," Adam stammered after a beat. His Henrietta accent slipped through the words like melted honey, which brought back some of the color to his face. Not that Ronan minded; he thought it made Adam all-the-more endearing. "I mean, um...I'm sorry."

Ronan, in general, did not consider himself the warm and compassionate type. Perhaps on occasion he fell into the category with Opal or Chainsaw, but with Adam, their state often fell more into the intense category. Blue and Gansey were cute; Adam and Ronan were hot. This did not, however, discount the fact that Ronan wanted more than ever to reach out to Adam, to pull him against him in a hug. It wasn't pity; Ronan knew how much Adam despised pity. It was something else, something like starlight, something like wanting to give Adam everything he had ever needed, even if he had never known he'd needed it.

"Adam," he said, keeping his voice low. "Come sit with me. Please." He patted the space beside him on the sofa, half-expecting Adam to just stand there, half-expecting him to comply.

After a beat, Adam eased his way across the floor, settling into the sofa as if he might break it.

"First, you don't have to thank me for loving you," Ronan said. "It's just something that happens. And anyway, I should be thanking you for giving me the opportunity to love you. Second, don't ever apologize. Even if you don't want to say it back. The only person who should apologize is your asshole father." Adam tensed, so Ronan added, "I'm not stupid, Adam. It think it's incredibly fucked that that's probably the first time anyone's ever said that to you, but I understand it's probably a lot to take in."

Adam just nodded. "For the record, I do like you a lot. I'm pretty sure I even…you know. The other word. But I just don't think I'm ready to actually say it yet."

Ronan regarded him evenly. "You've never said it to anybody," he said, and it wasn't as much of a question as it should have been.

Adam shook his head, staring at the back of his hand. "I never had a reason to."

Silence. And then, Ronan rubbed his fingers across the back of Adam's hand, seeking silent permission. When Adam didn't pull away, Ronan curled his fingers over Adam's knuckles and held him there. "So, did you want to lie down for a bit? Watch whatever's on TV maybe?"

Adam's relief was evident. The worry, wrought in his shoulders, melted from him like a wave. "I'd like that," he said, shifting to lean his head on Ronan's shoulder. A smile tugged the corners of Ronan's lips. This was Adam, his Adam, all he wanted, all he needed. He let his arm rest on the headrest for a few minutes, then slipped it down to Adam's shoulders, testing the waters, testing his boundaries. If Adam minded, he didn't say; he only seemed to lean closer to Ronan as a result. As Adam flipped through TV channels, Ronan thought to himself that there were billions of other guys with whom he could have wound up sharing his spring break, billions of other faces and names. But nothing, no one, Ronan knew, could compare to this: Adam Parrish, survivor, lone wolf, resting his cheek on Ronan's shoulder.

He wouldn't say it this time, wouldn't say it again until Adam was ready, but Ronan thought it made him love him even more.


End file.
